Accelerating Sharing Economy: Uber’s Dysfunctional Discourse of Technological Disruption

ACCELERATING SHARING ECONOMY

UBER’S DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

LUCIANO FRIZZERA PHD STUDENT CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

INTRO

YOUR RIDE, ON DEMAND

BETTER, FASTER, AND CHEAPER THAN A TAXI

YOUR SCHEDULE. YOUR MOVE

INTRO

INTRO

UBER

▸ January 2015: 150,000 active Uber drivers in the U.S.

▸ December 2015: Uber reached 1 billion rides

▸ Aggressive economic model

▸ Problematic relation to local governments have been a pressuring issue in many cities around the globe.

INTRO

UBER

▸ US$ 8.21 billion from venture capital investments

▸ Baidu, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Benchmark, Jeff Bezos, AITV and Foundation Capital.

▸ Market Value: US$ 60 billion

US$ 60,000,000,000.00

INTRO

NOT REALLY DISRUPTIVE.

▸ Constrain productive forces of technology

▸ Absorption and corruption of immaterial and cultural ideals

▸ Precarious of workforce

▸ Strong discourse for deregulation of the economy

ACCELERATIONISM

ACCELERATIONISM

▸ Supposedly intrinsic link between technological transformative forces and the axiomatic of exchange value and capital accumulation that formats our society.

▸ The only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest or critique, but to accelerate and exacerbate.

▸ Politics as we know it will lose relevance

▸ Jobs will be made obsolete by code and robots, and

▸ “the rich will … be first in line for new experiences, but otherwise there will be no differences among people; inequality will increase but cease to matter”(Frank, 2015)

TECHNOLOGICAL UTOPIA

▸ “There might be some civil wars, there might be many new nations, but the stabilizing force will be corporations, which will become even more like parts of a global government than they are today.”(Frank, 2015)

TECHNOLOGICAL UTOPIA

ACCELERATIONISM

ACCELERATIONISM

▸ Capitalism as the only solution is socially determined by capital itself.

▸ Technological discourse produced on the track of the high level of investments on STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)

ACCELERATIONISM

How innovative is Uber?

…

Technological breakthrough?

…

Alternative economic model?

…

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

E-commerce Geolocation

Instant Messaging

User ProfilingDispatching

Network Connection

MOST OF THE FEATURES USED BY UBER HAS BEEN AROUND FOR SOME TIME NOW.

THE ‘CULTURE INDUSTRY” PRESENTATION OF SILICON VALLEY SEEMS … TO [BLEND] QUITE NICELY WITH THE OVERALL STORY OF EXCEPTIONALISM THAT THESE GUYS LIKE TO TELL ABOUT THEMSELVESSummers, 2015

SHARING ECONOMY

SHARING

▸ Ideas and hugs

▸ Food and shelter

▸ Language and desire

SHARING ECONOMY

SHARING ECONOMY

▸ Economic activities based on digital peer-to-peer platforms

▸ No longer about a feeling good or being kind

▸ Sharing lost its “aura”

SHARING ECONOMY

SHARING ECONOMY

▸ Uber’s dysfunctional discourse: the goal is to overcome the coercive power of the state, disrupt regulations, and strengthening of capitalist social relations.

PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE

APPARENT REASONS TO WORK FOR UBER

▸ No boss

▸ Freedom to decide your own schedule

▸ Less labour regulations

▸ The level of compensation

▸ Earnings per hour do not vary much with hours worked

PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE

PROBLEMS WHEN WORKING FOR UBER

▸ Uber extract substantial amount of money from the transactions (20-30%)

▸ No transparency

▸ Lower hourly rate

▸ No benefits

▸ No protection

▸ No reimbursement

PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE

HOURLY RATE

$0.00

$5.00

$10.00

$15.00

$20.00

$25.00

Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco Average

Minimum wage (average) Uber Uber (Independent analysts) Taxi

Source: Hall, J. V., & Krueger, A. B. (2015); Glassdoor (2015); SheparShare (2015)

PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE

UBER IS A TEMP AGENCY

▸ “Uber is a lot more like turn of the century sweatshops” (O’Brien, 2015), due to the lack of benefits, unable to unionize, and no privacy protection.

▸ Does it really make sense to work for a company that pays less than the minimum wage but demands drivers to bring a $20,000 – $30,000 piece of equipment to the job?

UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET

OUTLAW

▸ Uber does not pay taxes or licensing fees

▸ does not pay benefits to the drivers

▸ take no responsibility for passengers’ safety

▸ hire untrained, unlicensed and uninsured drivers

▸ Breaks local laws

▸ Requires drivers to put their own personal assets at risk

THESE TERMS SHALL BE EXCLUSIVELY GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE NETHERLANDS, EXCLUDING ITS RULES ON CONFLICTS OF LAWSUber Terms and Conditions

UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET

PROBLEMATIC RELATIONS

▸ Taxi drivers demonstrations and protests in France, Brazil, Spain, Canada.

▸ Many cities are imposing a ban in Uber operations.

UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET

SURGING PRICES

▸ Whenever the demand for a ride increases to a point that exceeds the drivers’ capacity to supply a fast and effective service, the company “surge” the prices, sometimes several times the base rate.

▸ New Year’s Eve 2016: 9.9x times the base rate in many cities

▸ Cad$ 118.00 for a ride that normally costs Cad$ 20.00 in Montreal (CBC News, 2016).

CONCLUSION

DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

▸ Technological disruption as way to transform processes without changing productions relations.

▸ Late capitalism “nurtures, exploits, and exhausts its labor force and its cultural and affective production … it is technically impossible to separate neatly the digital economy of the Net from the larger network economy of late capitalism” (Terranova, 2003).

CONCLUSION

DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

▸ Frank (2015): Institutions are opaque with too much power in their hands, so it is “better to formalize our values forthrightly in code” in order to overcome the coercive power of the state.

▸ Leary (2015): “the discourse of innovation celebrates creativity, but just as another form of capital; it aims for the mystery of spiritual life, but summons only its reverence for authority; and it lionizes collaboration, but only for profit”.

ACCELERATING SHARING ECONOMYUBER’S DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

THANK YOUQUESTIONS?

LUCIANO FRIZZERA | [email protected]